


only love wins in the end

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27867037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: “There you are.”She turns to where Fitz stands in the door, leaning against the frame. His face is open, easy, as though he has not a care in the world. She likes this look on him. She has enjoyed getting acquainted with it again.“Here we are,” she confirms, one hand on the growing expanse of her stomach, as it has been for however long she has been up here. It’s a position that she assumed automatically, just as she had done with Alya, and it’s become so that she can’t imagine ever having not done it.Love's a funny thing. With their second child on the way, Jemma wonders about it a lot. Future fic.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 26
Kudos: 85





	only love wins in the end

**Author's Note:**

> hello! I hope you're all doing well!
> 
> This has been written for a while but I've been too nervous to post it because I have no idea if it's even remotely accurate in terms of parental feelings, and also I was just really worried I haven't written them in character here. But procrastination is a powerful thing and it was either post this or research disaster victim identification protocols so this won out as you can see!
> 
> The title is from 'Only Love' by Mumford & Sons
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

Fitz finds her in the rocking chair of one of the spare bedrooms.

She likes this room. It’s too small to be her and Fitz’s, and Alya had declared no interest in it once she saw it was regularly shaped and had no odd nooks and crannies like her current room does. It’s one of the smaller bedrooms, but perfectly cosy, and the view out of the window is one of the rolling Ochil Hills, their calming slopes seemingly stretching into the infinite.

She’s been here for goodness knows how long, swinging gently back and forth in the rocking chair, looking out at those hills. It’s a cloudy day, but it doesn’t feel gloomy. The grey feels comforting, and the view wraps around her like a blanket, keeping her warm. Alya laughs in the garden down below. At what, Jemma doesn’t know. Her daughter has quite the life now that her parents are not intimately acquainted with every single part of. Jemma’s too distracted just now to feel the ache of it.

“There you are.”

She turns to where Fitz stands in the door, leaning against the frame. His face is open, easy, as though he has not a care in the world. She likes this look on him. She has enjoyed getting acquainted with it again.

“Here we are,” she confirms, one hand on the growing expanse of her stomach, as it has been for however long she has been up here. It’s a position that she assumed automatically, just as she had done with Alya, and it’s become so that she can’t imagine ever having _not_ done it.

Fitz tilts his head, face scrunching a little. “You alright?”

“Yes,” she says immediately because that’s who she is, and then she sighs, because he won’t believe it. “No. Oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” He raises one eyebrow. “That’s not very good, is it?”

She tries to laugh but it sounds more like a scoff. “No, I suppose not.”

Unable to do anything else, her gaze drifts back to the window, to the grey clouds rolling across the sky. Alya’s laughter is still able to be heard clearly from the garden, her giggles floating upwards like bubbles in the air. Jemma frowns. She had thought Fitz was with her.

“What’s Alya doing?”

“Practicing her swimming.”

Jemma turns back to her husband, sure she’s misheard. “How on earth…”

“Don’t look at me,” he says, shrugging. “It made no sense to me either. But she’s adamant that’s what she’s doing.”

“Is she-”

“-in her jacket and welly boots and everything? Yup.”

“Oh dear,” Jemma laughs. “I suppose we’ll see on Tuesday whether or not she’s been successful.”

Alya adores her swimming lessons and desperately wants to practice as much as she can in order to impress her teacher the next again week. The latest thing she has been pestering her parents for is a swimming pool in the cellar of their house, her logic being that if they can redecorate her room then they can do a _nything._ To Alya, the simple is still very much magical, and whilst she thinks nothing of time travelling or flying through space, she is very much mystified by the way the leaves change colours and the act of putting paint on a wall.

Lost in her thoughts of their funny, wonderful daughter, Jemma doesn’t even notice that Fitz has gone until he returns with a stool from Alya’s room, putting it down in front of her. He settles into it, his knees cracking as he does. They’re getting older. It’s not just Alya’s growth that reminds them of the passing of time anymore.

Leaning forward, he taps Jemma’s knee with two fingers. “Penny for them.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Just a penny?”

He laughs, a soft sound that instantly makes her heart warm. “Depends how many you got. Wouldn’t want to get myself into debt.”

“If anyone in here’s in debt it’s me, Fitz.” And all of a sudden she has to turn away. She wishes she could blame hormones, but it feels like something deeper than that.

“Hey, come on now.” He rests his hand on her knee, and she can feel the warmth of it through her trousers. Warm and solid and utterly there. Just as he has always been. “What is it?”

The clouds are rolling now, moving faster than before across the sky. It’ll probably rain soon and they’ll have to tempt Alya in with hot chocolate and a film. Without either it’s impossible, and she’ll stay out there for hours splashing in puddles until she’s soaked through.

“You’ll think I’m silly,” she warns.

He gives her a soft grin as she meets his eyes once more. He looks a lot like Alya when he smiles. “When have I ever thought that?”

“Probably a lot over the years.”

“No,” he says emphatically. “Never.”

He’s lying, of course, but he does it to make her feel better and she loves him endlessly for it. They have become a lot to one another over the years, but before anything else he is her best friend. That has never changed.

She worries her bottom lip, her hand gently rubbing back and forth across her stomach. Their baby does a lazy somersault and though it’s a sensation she’s felt many times before, both with this pregnancy and the one before, it never gets old. It’s something she never stops marvelling over, something she never wants to stop marvelling over.

“I love her so much,” she says quietly, and then realises she has to clarify now. “Alya. I love her so much it’s almost impossible to describe it.”

Fitz says nothing, instinctively knowing that she isn’t done yet, but his hand remains on her knee, rubbing in slow, comforting circles.

“I was never scared of it. Not the way I was with you.” She gives him a rueful smile. “I was scared of being a mother and I was scared of us being away from everyone we knew but I was never scared of being able to love her. I just always did.”

From the very first moment that Alya was a confirmation, not just a dream in their minds and hearts, Jemma has loved her. An automatic, unconditional love that had come as naturally as breathing. There had been no choice, no decision to be made. She had held her daughter for the first time in her arms and realised then that her entire life made sense.

“And now I’m worried…” she breaks off, the trembling of her bottom lip too much for her to be able to carry on. She tastes salt on her lips and realises that she’s been crying far longer than she thought. A deep, shuddery breath and she carries on. “I’m worried that I won’t be able to love this baby as much as I love her.”

“Oh, Jemma,” he breathes, and squeezes her knee tightly.

“I just love her so much, Fitz,” she says, voice choked with tears, but she has to say it now, she has to tell him. “It’s so intense it aches, almost. It’s like all I want to do is tuck her away inside me again where nothing and nobody can touch her.” She laughs a little. “I mean isn’t that silly? I never want to be away from her, not for a second.”

She’s worried that there’ll be something akin to reproach in Fitz’s eyes, something that tells her how bad a person she is, how bad a mother she is for thinking this about her daughter just now when they have another baby on the way. Instead there is only love.

It gives her the courage to carry on.

“It’s like I’m obsessed with her. Even when she wakes us up in the morning by jumping on the bed with her monkey, I don’t want her to stop. I want her to always be with me and I never want her to go away.” She swipes underneath her eye. “How ridiculous is that?”

Fitz tilts his head to the side. “It’s not ridiculous.”

She scoffs. “Isn’t it? I mean she’s five years old, for goodness sake.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “but she’s also growing up. She’s doing things without us for the first time in her life. That was always going to be scary.”

It was, and it was something that she’s never really had to think about until now. It was something she never chose to think about.

“Maybe,” she allows. “But the way I feel for her, how can I feel like that about someone else? How can I possibly half that? How can I replicate it?” She looks at Fitz imploringly, almost too afraid to speak, because the next words seem too horrible to say. “What if I can’t?”

She expects for him to do anything but chuckle and say, “Oh, Jemma,” in a tone much lighter than before.

She frowns. “It’s not funny.”

“No, no it’s not. It’s not funny.” He shakes his head, but the small smile on his face still remains.

She chews on her bottom lip, afraid to ask the next question but she does it anyway. “Do you think I’m a terrible mother?”

“Never,” he says emphatically. “I couldn’t, but especially not when we’ve had this conversation before.”

“Have we?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Remember? It was just after we found out you were pregnant and we were still getting our heads screwed on straight. And I was scared because of how much I loved you, and I didn’t know how I could love anyone the way I loved you. How could I have the room in my heart for someone else when there was only just you.” He squeezes her knee again. “You remember what you said?”

“Yes,” she says, laughing a little bit through her tears, the moment suddenly as clear in her mind as though it has only just happened. “I told you that you were too much of a romantic. That you don’t just love with your heart, you love with every bit of you. And if you take into account every atom that makes up every cell that makes up every part of you, then that’s a lot that’s able to love.”

It was a rather poetic speech for her, something that Fitz might have said himself if he hadn’t been so afraid. And he was. He’d been so afraid in that moment. She’d seen it, he hadn’t needed to tell her a thing. He’d been afraid to love, afraid to not. He’d been afraid of being like his father, afraid of not being like his mother. Afraid of not being enough. And she’d never been anything less than one-hundred percent certain that he would be amazing, the best father there could be. Is this how he feels about her, she wonders? Are there things about her that he just knows, without any doubt in the world?

“Exactly.” He smiles, giving her such a fond look. “Love isn’t some finite thing, Jemma. You of all people should know that.”

And perhaps she should, because isn’t this what she said to him, after all? When he was afraid of not being enough, of not giving enough, wasn’t she the one who curled herself around him and told him that he never had to be scared, not when he had given her everything, and then kept on giving her more?

“It’s not just about there not being enough,” she says, looking down at her growing bump, at the hand that rests on it. “What about if it’s not the _same_?”

She’s feared a lot over the years, but this has become something that she has begun to fear over anything else. She doesn’t want to be the mother that loves her children unequally, that loves one more than the other. Until she had children she never thought she would be. But the fear is here now and it’s real, and it’s a weight that’s been pressing itself against her chest for the last few weeks now, and she can’t ignore it anymore.

She doesn’t quite know what she expects Fitz to say, but even so, when he says, “Well, so what if it’s not the same?” She wasn’t expecting that.

“Fitz,” she cries, horrified. “I can’t love my children differently. What kind of an awful mother would that make me?”

He looks entirely unperturbed. “I don’t think it would make you awful at all.”

She has no words for him, and the shock of there being such a situation must register on her face because he takes her hand in his own and holds it tightly.

“She was our first, Jemma,” he says, and there is so much love shining in his eyes. “She was born when things were scary and unsure. We spent three years with her alone in that star system, and that’s something that will always link us, no matter what happens next. A bond that we can’t ignore, that we shouldn’t.”

He takes his other hand and rests it gently on her bump. Their baby gives a kick, an almighty one, and the surprise and then joy on Fitz’s face is something she takes a picture of in her mind, storing it away for the future with all the other snapshots she has of him.

“With this one it’ll be scary in a different way, and we’ll have all sorts of moments that we didn’t have with Alya. That doesn’t mean we love her any less. It doesn’t change what’s happened before.”

She thinks of the scans they’ve already had, of the room they’re sitting in that’s in a house very firmly on Earth. She thinks of the baby’s clothes they have bought, not made themselves from scraps of material. She thinks of how they have done none of this before.

“It’ll be different,” he says. “Different doesn’t mean bad or worse. It doesn’t mean it’ll be a lesser kind. It’ll be a different kind of love from me and from Alya and that’s alright.”

Her bottom lip wobbles but this time for an entirely different reason. Oh how did she get so lucky to be linked to this man so completely for her whole entire life. How he manages to do this, to pluck eloquent speeches that contain exactly what she needs to hear from seemingly thin air, she will never know.

He stands up, kissing her on the forehead. “It’ll just be different, Jemma,” he says against her skin, in a voice that she swears she has never known, “and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

She nods, tears falling finally, and presses her forehead against his.

“I’m sorry,” she says, feeling lighter. He’s right, of course. They have so many moments to experience that they didn’t get to the first time around. There’s so much more to enjoy than there is to be afraid of.

He chuckles, a smooth sound. “Don’t be,” he says. “You were just being me, and I was just being you.”

“No.” She smiles up at him. “No, I think that was entirely you.”

“Maybe a bit of both of us,” he concedes, but she knows he does it just to make her happy. “Now come on, you need a sleep.”

“What?” She frowns. “No I-” and then she is cut of by a large yawn. “Oh. Maybe I am more tired than I thought.”

“Told you,” Fitz says. “You go lie down and I’ll sort Alya. Hot chocolate should work, right?”

“But what about dinner?” She starts to struggle out of the rocking chair only for Fitz to hold out his hand, which she accepts without thinking.

Holding both of her hands, Fitz fixes her with a look. “I’m more than capable of making it.”

“But it’s my turn.”

“You can do it tomorrow,” he says, which she knows he’s also just saying to make her feel better. He’ll likely still do it tomorrow, and probably every night for the next two months. As different as this pregnancy may be, some things will still never change.

“But-”

“I’ll wake you up for it,” he assures her, walking with her to their bedroom as though she couldn’t do it herself. A part of her wants to complain about it, but another part very much enjoys the soft weight of his hands on her shoulders. 

Once in their bedroom he lets her go only to turn back the duvet, before helping her gently down onto the bed and underneath the covers. She shivers, not because she’s cold, but because she’s suddenly so very cosy and feels so very loved.

She burrows under the covers, the room getting dim as Fitz closes the curtains. “Are you sure you don’t want me?” she murmurs.

“I always want you,” he tells her from the window, _that_ look on his face. “I just don’t _need_ you for the next few hours.”

Jemma huffs but draws the covers closer around her. Her offer was only half genuine anyway. “Charming,” she mutters, but she’s smiling into the pillow.

“I’ll send Alya to wake you up when tea is ready,” he says, coming over and tucking the duvet in around her.

“Alright,” she hums, feeling herself begin to drift off. She hears Fitz laugh lowly and move away.

“Oh, Fitz?” she says, opening her eyes and squinting in the dim room to find the vague shape of her husband.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, needing to say it. After all these years she refuses to leave things unsaid. “For earlier.”

He chuckles and she realises how it’s one of her favourite sounds. For so many years it felt as though he didn’t laugh at all, barely even smiled, and she never even realised how much she missed it until they took that time and it was as though the sun came out. The smile she hadn’t seen for years, that she feared she had lost forever, was suddenly there, and since then it has rarely left.

“I was only saying what you would have said to me,” he says, “what you _have_ said to me before.”

He is thoroughly impossible. “Well, thank you for saying it anyway.”

“Always.” He comes over and gently kisses her on the forehead, something that he is apt to do a lot these days. It makes her feel safe and warm and oh so loved, that the memory of the one other time it occurred, the one time she felt none of what she does now, is almost erased.

“Now get some sleep,” he says, and then he turns to leave. “Love you both.”

“We love you, too,” she murmurs, and does as he requests, drifting off to a sleep full of dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day and are managing to stay safe and well in this crazy world <3


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